forward slash, exclamation point, backward slash
by mnemonica
Summary: From the moment he touched the stars to that time Fuji broke his car with a penny. Collection of ShiraiFu oneshots.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** "/!\\"  
><strong>Pair:<strong> Shiraishi/Fuji  
><strong>Rated:<strong> safe.  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Reappearance of the Rambling Ryoma**  
><strong>**the rest:  
><strong>written for countervalue/lj, re: help_japan  
>hopelessly late and yet i'm still apologizing<br>some of this stuff is seriously saptastic, but i haven't written anything in months ;_;  
>wordcount 2069<p>

* * *

><p>-x-<p>

**#1, crush**

-/-

-\-

He could count them on three fingers and one thumb.

They weren't really subtle or furtive or obnoxious or deep. Wasn't even meant to be dirty. So they were simple ones, tip of the finger turn of the clock, clicks and tumbles and sweeps and bumps, completely unadulterated and over-deliberated and once the results turned up on the developer, so cold it burned. No breathtaking fireworks, just tiny little candles. That season, he turned the key in the ignition. That season, he spoke his mind. He took photographs on a black and white film camera, a Minolta 35mm SLR, and every time he tried to connect, it became a little harder. Every time he tried to make himself clear, he could see Fuji slipping up and out, a fraction of a centimetre out of his grasp. How it was lovely, how it wasn't silent, how it was blurred. And most of what he remembered now, it made him sure.

Four times. He could count them on three fingers and one thumb.

-/-

-\-

"You got a problem with talking, Echizen?"

"Only when it's people I don't know very well."

"I...okay."

"No, seriously."

"Care to give an example?"

"..."

"Oh, come on. I'm listening."

"..."

"..."

"...I know you get the feeling. It's kind of like, I want to say something relevant and important and potentially witty, but I'm not sure if you'd find it relevant or important or potentially witty at all. I want to establish connections, you know? And then it gets silent and awkward and being the gentleman that you are, Shiraishi, you'd start a lame conversation about tennis and say something stupid about your, quote, Style of Biblical Proportions, unquote, and as a member of Seishun Gakuen tennis team, I'd then be obligated to tell you how much you suck and I really don't think that's necessary for either of us, do you?"

"So," Shiraishi said, "You're saying you don't know me very well. And I'm also a gentleman who brags about my tennis. Are you that opposed to talking to me?"

"By principle."

"What a shitty principle."

"I mean-"

"Oh and you think I suck?"

"-you know what, I think that's exactly what I'm saying. You should go home."

"Oh. Okay."

"...It's because you want to talk to Fuji-senpai, isn't it?"

"You know, I liked you much better when you were laconic."

-/-

-\-

Hair first. He touched Fuji's hair first.

It was likely because they were discussing girls. He didn't know it was Fuji then, but he'd assumed that it was some nerdy buddy of Oshitari Yuushi's and although he didn't exactly dislike Yuushi he could say that he much preferred Kenya, and Kenya only because of the excess vitriol, his status as a glutton for pain irrelevant to the cause. Either way, Yuushi was one of those kids who wore dress pants and poofy leather jackets with metal buttons that shone unnaturally bright. He was also one of those kids who spoke like a vampire.

It was likely because they were discussing girls. The other boys on the team were still finishing their sets and the two clowns were charged with barring Kintaro from the conversation, so it was just the four of them, Shiraishi and Kenya and Yuushi and Yuushi's friend. A lively quartet. Somebody was imparting wisdom and somebody was cracking dirty jokes; the scales seemed to balance themselves and the sky was blue that day, so they were all happy. He felt like he could take a bite out of the sky. It was that blue.

So it was likely because they were discussing girls, and because Kenya cupped his hands around invisible breasts in the air and made crude sucking noises, that it seemed natural when he asked Shiraishi, "Hey buchou, what kind of girl do you like anyway?"

He blinked. "Me?"

"Yeah, you," said Yuushi, and he was smirking. "I'm sure you're popular with the girls here, aren't you, buchou? Got a fanclub or two?"

"Actually, he's kind of unhelpfully cold," Kenya said, "like expired fish in the market. Extremely unapproachable. Believe me, I've tried."

"You're certainly not a girl," Yuushi pointed out. "I know this for a fact."

"True!" said Kenya. "But he's still unhelpfully cold. Like expired fish in the market. Do you like my analogy?"

"I don't quite understand it, but it's nice," Shiraishi said dryly, "I also appreciate it when you talk about me like I'm not here. And when have you ever tried to _approach_me? Because I don't remember any such incident."

"Last week!" Kenya pouted. He pointed an accusing finger at Shiraishi's nose. "I tried to approach you last week. Don't you remember? When we were in Tokyo. Suidobashi. Sushi bar with the girl who wouldn't stop talking about skinny jeans and Koreans. Remember?"

"Kenya, you were trying to approach me for _money_."

(Fuji let out a small laugh.)

"Doesn't change anything," said Kenya, and he went back to air-groping. "So what do you look for in a girl, buchou?"

-/-

-\-

(But it was only for a fraction of a second when he was caught off guard, and he had involuntarily reached out a hand and he felt hair and it was soft and it was like seeing weird lights go off in the sky and he was alarmed but he couldn't say anything. But it came too fast and even though his reflexes were quite splendid he was no match for Yuushi's friend. "I like hair," he blurted out, and three of his fingers were still threaded through thin brown hair and Yuushi's friend just stared at him, bemused. Neither of them moved. Shiraishi couldn't figure out the expression on his face.

"I like hair," he said again, louder.

"I can see that," said the boy, and he smiled. Shiraishi retracted his hand and it burned.

"Fuji's hair, for example," said Yuushi. His eyebrows were raised.

"Y-Yeah, Fuji-san. I like your hair.")

-/-

-\-

There is something that comes completely natural to the people who are part of the worlds of business and competitive sports. Polite form: grasp his right hand with your right hand and shake twice, the first time smoothly and the second time firmly. Casual form: raise your right hand up high, extend your fingers, wait for him to slam his palm against yours with a satisfying crack (fist bumps are optional unless you're Gin).

It's not even about establishing a connection. It's common courtesy. Shiraishi knows this because he's experienced more than his fair share of handshakes and high-fives across the tennis net, mostly from winning and a handful from losing. After a while, the gesture loses its meaning. It's simply a brush of fingers, a flash of teeth between sweaty upper lips, dead fish eyes and flecks of perspiration that drip down in awkward places. He won't buy you coffee tomorrow. He won't even consider orange juice. Just what is he to you? A friend? Oh hell no, you just spent the last forty-five minutes rallying for match point against this guy. A foe? But look, he just lost the game to you. He's insignificant now. A monster? That one only works when it's Rikkai-dai.

There's something about high-fives that Shiraishi just doesn't get.

But when Fuji Syuusuke offers him a hand from across the net, he can't help but feel a little breathless.

"You were quite the challenge." There was a smile, now. He'd already learned by this point that Fuji had nothing but smiles.

"Knocked me off my feet, certainly," he said, and he hoped he was being polite enough.

Fuji held up his right hand. "You're too kind." They high-fived. Shiraishi retracted his hand and it burned.

* * *

><p>(So what is he? You won't find out until you're on your ass panting like a two-hundred-pound dog and your teammates are all trying to forget your phone number.)<p>

* * *

><p>Could be that he'd just fought a long and grueling battle between the white lines, but he's willing to risk it to wax some poetics. And when Fuji's eyes remained closed, Shiraishi knew that it was paradise lost. No coffee. Not even orange juice.<p>

-/-

-\-

Water bottle came next.

It was between two sets, when Fuji wasn't really there and Tezuka was and Shiraishi was sort of just standing between them, pretending to himself that he rendered some sort of physical presence, there in the blank space above the white lines of the tennis court and below the grainy wooden bleachers. The sun was setting but no one seemed to care and it was just another one of twenty-thousand afternoons when there was an endless match because the sun couldn't bother to drop off the edge of the world. Tennis players must all be masochists.

I'm here, he kind of wanted to say, but then he kind of didn't.

Fuji was watching the sky, in a careless sort of way. There were no clouds and his tennis racket was wedged between his right elbow and his hip, sweat dripped off the bridge of his nose and his eyes were slightly scrunched and the sun was bright and he could have been happy but Shiraishi wouldn't know.

Two sets. Ball bounces out, once, twice. Something that resembled the Higuma Otoshi, but that was a move from a year ago so it couldn't have accounted for much. Tezuka is Tezuka. He isn't Echizen, but he's Tezuka. Another point, three more points. Tezuka, Fuji, Fuji, Tezuka.

Shiraishi hadn't thought about the water bottle until the very last moment. There was a whole pile of them near the benches, but the players on the court would have to scramble across the pavement and volley over the picket fence to get to the bleachers, and it always seemed altogether too troublesome for Shiraishi, so most of the time he'd gather a couple dozen bottles with him and bring them onto the court. He just happened to see Fuji there. It didn't mean anything. _It really didn't mean anything._

Their fingertips brushed. Shiraishi retracted his hand and it didn't burn.

(Perhaps, he thought, this is positive reinforcement. Or maybe I'm just insane.)

"Thanks," said Fuji.

"You looked thirsty," was all he said.

(And then, "Hey, do you happen to carry any painkillers?" So it came to be that he welcomed insanity with open arms.)

-/-

-\-

Ergo, the last touch was the one that cinched it. The high-five at the end of the match. He might have collapsed but he doesn't really remember; the only bit he does remember about that day was that he'd been unnecessarily strict about their seating arrangement in the bleachers while simultaneously wary of Kintaro chumming it up too much with the opposing teams. Gin tried to be reassuring; he glared at everyone who wasn't Shiten within a fifteen-meter radius of the bleachers. The rest of his team needed tranquilizers.

That was when the glockenspiels started playing.

-/-

-\-

"Let me get this straight, you touched Fuji-senpai four times-"

"It was strictly platonic!"

"Platonic! I understand. I think we learned that word in class. The class where we got to use dictionaries."

"...That's great."

"So anyway you basically high-five him a couple of times and fondle his hair and hand him a water bottle or something and now you're madly in love with him? Is this how it's really supposed to work? Your mind is so messed-up. It's like that crack ad. This Is Your Brain On Fuji-senpai. You know how messed-up this is? Your mind is so messed-up."

"Not love. It's not love, Echizen."

"Fine, then. A crush. It's a crush, right? That sounds pettier and much more your style, anyway."

"And I'll remind you again: you are not talking to Atobe."

"You know if you keep changing the subject you'll never get to see Fuji-senpai."

"At this point I'm not sure I want to."

-/-

-\-

He broods for a while in his room that night. It's really hot and there are mosquitoes humming in the air so he starts to feel like he's being smothered by a pillow and this weird dream is playing on the radio like the air conditioning's getting smashed,

And now he's imagining weird shit like holding hands and warm coffee in the morning and snow, lots of snow because there's not a lot of it in Osaka. He does it four times.

-x-

* * *

><p><em>reviews are always nice. :)<em>


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary**: Fuji is a bassoonist.  
><strong>Rated<strong>: safe.  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: people start acting weird when they're in college  
><strong>the rest<strong>:  
>hope you enjoy my rendition of a university!au<br>shiraifu is more of a brotp here, haha  
>wordcount 1936<p>

* * *

><p>-x-<p>

**#2, passions is coming on and i wouldn't miss it for the world**

-/-

-/-

To further his suspicion of the fallacies in Shiraishi's life story, Fuji drew a storyboard of all the events. Apart from the enthusiastic stick figures and random melodramatic inserts, he embellished the border of each box with careful little musical notes and decapitated animals, stick-figure puppies with their heads impossibly skewed at sixty-degree angles. The elaborate fanfare remained elusive, and Fuji remained vigilant. He said many things to Shiraishi. Said the world could become a reckless place. Said he wanted to offer a refreshing image. Said it made him want to become more artistic, or maybe make potions in a traveling show. Said he kind of wished Eiji was here to listen to him talk. Said Shiraishi should probably shut up if he didn't have anything positive to contribute.

"You don't need to go as far as to draw me coming out of the birthing canal," said Shiraishi. "I really don't think that's a necessary part of our collective unconsci-"

"Shut up," said Fuji, and he continued to sketch.

After, Fuji went to sleep with a clearer head and fiddled with the curtains on the east side so that he could expose his head to the stars. It was raining that night in the skies near the apartment and neither of them could see the stars, but he did it anyway. Shiraishi pretended not to notice Fuji's strange behavior only because he had a biotech practical in the morning. The television in the room next door drifted through the whitewash and plaster like a ghost, making muffled ghost noises through the walls. Everything was too thin and Shiraishi could hear the bass drums, loose entrails from a disparaging car commercial. He wasn't very interested in Honda Civics anyway, unless if they were dark blue and from '92. And even then he wouldn't have settled for one unless if the dealers threw in for free some metallic flames on the frame of his license plate.

While Fuji had his head in the stars, Shiraishi fell asleep thinking about license plates.

-/-

This wasn't even the first time. The first time it occurred, Shiraishi was still studying business in college and Fuji wasn't. Fuji had decided to become a street performer. Fuji had decided to walk the narrow route and undertake the braver task, the one that didn't require any bricklaying and too much crumpled paper. For seven weeks he camped out next to the room where the suicide club met every Wednesday until last Wednesday and he played on his bassoon a sad tune by Satie until everyone around him started sniffling, including himself. During that period, he ate crackers and drank Gatorade. His heart was in his head. For no reason Shiraishi could explain, it reminded him of castles.

"It's because I'm trying to be lively," Fuji said once, only once. "I want to be alive!"

"Well it's not as if you're dead," said Shiraishi.

Fuji ignored him. "We could have this whole concert every week. With that other band who played at the Homeless Net Cafe. What's the leader's name again? I think he called himself Professor Oak. Or was it her, the girl with the loud voice? Elizaveta. I heard she fucked every single professor at that fancy conservatory in Vienna. You know it's a right shame that the members of the suicide club had to off themselves last Wednesday. I wanted to play for them. I even wanted to do a Madonna number but I never learned the proper octave for the song. It's a real shame they had to jump off that bridge."

"Isn't that the point of the suicide club? To kill themselves?"

"But that's just. Depressing."

"I still don't see where you're going with this."

"It is what it is, ne."

-/-

But for Shiraishi, who was still a business major, the truly depressing bit was that nobody ever spared Fuji any coins. After a while, he inferred that it was because Fuji was too well-dressed, so resplendent in his blue raincoat and birkenstocks that mostly everyone on campus just assumed that he was a flippant art student jonesing to become a somnabulist.

And Fuji didn't mind. His head was still in the stars.

-/-

-\-

There was one day when Fuji decided he'd go shopping for apples.

"You can come along," he told Shiraishi brightly.

"I'm afraid that I'm not very good at soliciting advice when it comes to picking apples. What will I do?" Shiraishi asked, and received no response.

As it turned out, Fuji didn't require any help picking out apples. He drove to the supermarket in his sister's red convertible with Shiraishi sitting in the backseat tapping his fingernails against the windowpanes. He chatted pleasantly to himself about tax returns and Jimi Hendrix and the trees in Alaska, bouncing ideas off the windshield of his car. He was brainstorming possible locations for his next concert, and the vacant lot behind the Biotech Building seemed liked the most viable option at the moment. He drove with either both hands or no hands on the steering wheel, never with just one. The radio was turned off, and a piece of duct tape sealed away any possibility for musical intervention. They arrived at the supermarket at 5:45 sharp, and Shiraishi realized that his watch was five minutes fast.

Fuji didn't pick out any of the good apples. He did, however, find every single apple that had a little black hole in it or a bruise from rough handling. He took prize in scavenging the Granny Smiths for ones with brown spots the size of his thumb, and he spent ten minutes prowling through the Red Delicious pile for one without a stem. He made Shiraishi hold all of his baskets while he went trotting off in search of outstanding apples, which Shiraishi took to be the reason why he had been invited to come along on this trip. As a business major, he was very good at ruling out reasons for his existence.

Fuji continued to search for apples.

"It's all subjective," he explained, and Shiraishi listened. "What's blemished to you may look absolutely enchanting in the eyes of a worm. That is, if worms had eyes. I'm not one to stereotype. Moreover, if everyone picks out the good apples, who will eat the rest? And once you pick out a damaged one, you won't have to worry about damaging it."

He had a point.

"So what do you think?" he asked, picking out an over-ripe Fuji. He dumped his namesake in Shiraishi's basket. It smelled sickly sweet.

"It's..."

"Ectasy," Fuji murmured. "It's...ectasy, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it that," said Shiraishi, "but sure."

"You don't really think so, do you."

"I can't say I've put much thought into it, to be honest."

Fuji shrugged. They drove home and Shiraishi rode shotgun.

-\-

-/-

It grew irritating to watch him. He would stand there and play something really off-putting, fingers rhythmic on the pipe of his tattered bassoon. Time would climb into bed for a while, the color of his raincoat would bring out the color in his eyes, and he'd watch the students in the University drift by him; the ones who were alone would glance at him once and pretend to shift around their pockets for change while the ones in pairs would forego the routine entirely and chat about drinks at the karaoke bar and Yoko ditching Yu for Koike while wearing Rihanna's dress, off-color jokes from engineering class and the Latin professor who spoke to his students in accented German. Half the time, Shiraishi expected Fuji to drop the act and bounce forward in a horrific remix of the Sexy Sax Man, but it was clearly too much to ask for. (He concluded that not everyone was privileged enough to be a fan of George Michael.)

But the funny part was, Fuji never stopped. He never spoke during these little performing sessions, but he never stopped. He slowed down, but he didn't ever try to stop. It was like watching a wooden statue slowly turning into stone.

The next semester, Shiraishi dropped his business class and took up biotech.

-/-

"You're kind of creepy," Chitose told him. "You're kind of really creepy."

"And how'd you figure that one?"

"Did you actually take up biotech just so you could exit class everyday and see him play angsty music on his pipe? You're practically a stalker, Kura."

"It's not a pipe, it's a bassoon. And what would you rather I'd done? I have no musical background. It's not like I wanted to become a member of the new suicide club, either. They have a tendency to die."

"It's not funny," said Chitose. "I had to convince my sister against it. She was going through her Versailles phase and Jasmine You's death hit her really hard, okay? So it's not funny."

"I never said it was funny."

"But you were thinking it."

"I was not."

"Were too."

"Oh for the love of-"

"Never mind. You gotta focus on your studies, man. You don't even come out to play tennis like you used to. All I do these days is commute back and forth and fuck Teppei in between my hours at the host club. It gets kind of boring, you know. Maybe you should worry about me some more! It's not like his pipe is that important."

"It's a _bassoon_."

-/-

It took him three months to win Fuji over, after that. He spent more time in the vacant lot than in any other place that semester, sitting on an upturned trash can listening to Fuji play the same notes for forty-five minutes and then abruptly switching to DBSK. It was moderately enjoyable, and bearable only because Fuji's blue raincoat brought out the color in his eyes. On more than one occasion, he tried to request Ingrid Michaelson, but Fuji would never appease him, citing the weather and irreconcilable differences. It was during this time that Shiraishi started imagining the castles again, except this time there were tiptoes in the corridors and slightly off-putting musky odors and tabby cats everywhere. The statue continued its descent into stone. The sun would set and Fuji would play for five more minutes, and he would leave with his bassoon case and Shiraishi would sit there, contemplating the weather and what it could offer as a veritable asset to their collective conscious. It never seemed to congeal properly.

And after three months, Fuji finished five minutes early. He skipped the ending to his ballad about a flower lady, and approached Shiraishi.

"Hey, I think I get it," he said. The bassoon case was slung over his back like a neglected love child. "You have a crush on me, don't you?"

"O-Of course not," said Shiraishi. "I just like hanging around here."

"You used to be a business student," Fuji accused. "You used to be obsessed with equilibrium theory. You can't just suddenly turn recombinant DNA on me. That's just wrong, ne."

"A guy can change," said Shiraishi. "He doesn't need the approval of others. He can't pick all the good apples. It's...ecstasy."

"Ecstasy," Fuji repeated, and then he laughed. The sun went down and his neglected love child slipped off his shoulder a little. "And here I was, thinking that going to university in Osaka would never become more exasperating."

"Technically, you never went to the University."

"But if I move in with you, I will escape this technicality. Right?"

Shiraishi couldn't say anything to that. He waited for the punch line.

-/-

-\-

Unfortunately, it never came.

-x-

* * *

><p><em>thank you for reading!<em>


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary**: Both of them are walking in the rain and heading towards the sky.  
><strong>Rating<strong>: mostly safe.  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: there seems to be an irl poltergeist among us  
><strong>other bits:<strong>  
>lol i'm not even going to both explaining this one, but countervalue's prompts are really inspiring (:<br>rainymood(dot)com might get you in the right state of mind  
>wordcount 2334<br>enjoy!

* * *

><p>-x-<p>

**#3; where there's rain, there's solitude**

-/-

They usually forget about each other pretty quickly; Shiraishi drives with one hand on the gear clutch and Fuji radiosurfs between feeling aimless and breathing thoughts. Neither of them have their eyes on the road, and Shiraishi doesn't have his headlights on. It's 8 pm and Fuji wants to remind him because the highway smells dark and life-threatening. He stares out the passenger's window, instead, and tries to remember the name of the girl who sat behind him in psychology.

"Are we going to stop by Tesco later? I want some more instant coffee."

"Sure."

The raindrops on the windshield look like plastic beads, the kind with the microscopic holes that Fuji's sister used to string on her keychains back in junior high. She made one for Fuji once. It was purple and he kept it on the zipper of his lunchbox for three whole years during elementary school.

"That was a red light, wasn't it?"

"Hm."

Shiraishi's car is uncluttered, virtually spotless save for a few specks of dust on the dashboard over the odometer. There's one of those Chinese-style red bow things hanging from the neck of the rearview mirror, but it's been there for so long that neither of them pay much attention to it.

"You're driving in the middle of two lanes."

"I am?"

"You are."

It's at this point when Shiraishi feels like he's in a ship out at sea. There's nobody on this road and he's got a right to feel lonely. He should be entitled to a bicycle, too, maybe one of those early models with a large wheel in the front. Right now he's also kind of craving chicken soup. Chicken soup at sea, maybe with electropop and a few canaries for company.

"Hey, what's that shiny thing?"

"You know, Fuji, I kind of wish you were born a girl."

"It's really bright."

"'Cause then, y'know, then I could be your boyfriend."

"...what?"

There's this light at the end of the tunnel. It's kind of bright but also kind of frayed, or maybe it's just the moonlight and the rainlight and the softer, more contradictory notes speaking dialects into thin air. Thunder, or maybe just a large bass drum. Either way it's coming closer and it's slightly alarming, but it's in the corner of Fuji's eyes and Shiraishi's too busy adjusting the radio dial and drowning in his miserable chicken soup to notice.

"That light, do you see it?"

"I do."

"What is it?"

"..."

"What is it?"

"...shit, I think it's a car."

"Why isn't it slowing down?"

"I dunno. Why isn't it slowing down?"

"Your headlights. They're not- Oh god your h-"

-/-

(Together, they enjoy their solitude.)

-/-

If somebody had caught the incident on videotape, it would have been blurry at the corners and all over the center of the frame like somebody had rubbed an oily thumb over it and then cursed the cameraman in seven different tongues. He knows, you know, Heaven knows, Hell knows. Oh and maybe your aunt, too, because he might have told her by accident over that last bottle of whiskey.

It was a Subaru, kind of old and shabby in and around the hind legs. They swung into it at around 40 kilometers an hour, left around from the right shoulder, no spin despite the weather conditions. A clean smash, and now Shiraishi couldn't feel his legs. The driver was a lady taking her eight-year-old daughter to a piano lesson; she confessed to having received a phone call from the instructor in the middle of the road and she didn't want to be disrespectful since Menma-chan was just about to learn something really pretty by Satie, either way she was kind of in a tight spot from a financial standpoint and her daughter was already learning her scales with a classmate on borrowed time you know how it is or perhaps you don't since you look like you're in college but anyway wouldn't it be a better idea if we both walked away with a little damage on our headlights and held off on the insurance company? It's not like the twenty-centimetre-wide dent in your front bumper is that big of a deal.

"Sure," Fuji said, the same time Shiraishi said, "Absolutely not."

A pause.

"It's my car, not yours, Fuji," he pointed out.

"Right," Fuji said, and he kept his mouth shut after that.

-/-

-/-

They usually forget about each other pretty quickly, except this time Fuji wants Shiraishi to drive his car into Shinjuku before he brings it to the repair shop. He says something cheerful about a penny and a theory and and then flashes his best smile only no one can see it because of the rainlight, but then he's pledging stuff like obnoxiously red condoms and buying Shiraishi ice cream.

He tells Shiraishi to park next to the large delivery truck with the mattress logo and then he advises that Shiraishi go and relieve himself at the Hyatt before they begin the experiment. It starts raining again and Shiraishi hears some very suspicious sounds outside but he contributes it to Momotaro because he can be insensitive about people on the streets sometimes, too. When he comes back out Fuji's already grabbed him by the arm, frog-marching him down a side alley. His grip feels icy and uncomfortable but Shiraishi doesn't complain.

"I don't get it, what are we doing?"

"You'll see, won't you? That's why we're here. I'm really glad you decided to total your car today, ne."

"Why are you glad?"

"You'll _see._"

-/-

(He was humble about their solitude, at least.)

-/-

They end up on the roof of the right tower of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, tasting stars.

It's actually a quarter past eleven and the observation deck below them is already closed for business. Shiraishi doesn't even want to know how Fuji managed to smuggle the both of them in here but he does find out, from the large plastic sign near the stairwell, that there is a security guard who does his rounds every fifteen to twenty minutes. It's fucking windy and any chance of getting his breath taken away by a spectacular view are stolen by the salacity of the weather. The roof is loud in the rain, despite the solitary glaze of the banisters and the thin sheet of cement underneath his feet. Somebody downstairs must be washing the windows from the insides.

"What are we doing here," he hisses. He feels the water slide off his body like a second skin. He's cold and slightly feverish, in thirty-two seconds his clothes are going to peel off his body like wet newspaper and it won't feel erotic. At all. "Come on, let's go. I'm freezing my balls off."

Fuji ignores him and approaches the edge of the roof.

"Come over here, you."

"Fuji..."

"I said, _come over here_."

-/-

He moved forward reluctantly, walking on star-shaped sponges. His footsteps were squishy and raindrops sloshed around in his sneakers. He reached the railing and felt his heart drop 243 meters down into the murky sidewalk below. Fuji took ahold of his arm again, and this time spun him around so that they were facing each other.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey?"

"Will you jump with me?"

"W-What?" he stammered. "What?"

"So you'll jump, then?"

"...No! God no, are you insane?"

"Do you love me?"

"What the fuck? Don't pull that one. Listen, this is a really bad idea, Fuji...We could die or no actually who are you kidding really we _will_die. This isn't very like you. Why would you want to die?"

"Well why ever not?" Fuji said, and he was smiling again. "We were going to die today anyway. Because you wouldn't even look at the road while you were driving."

"You're crazy."

"Tell me you love me."

He was indignant. Felt the raindrops sink into his ears and his nostrils and for a minute felt like crying and shouting and sobbing but stopped and thought about the rain. The lusty rain, the rancorous salacity, the _nerve_of it to rain like this. It was adding to the fireworks for the dead girls and the fighting spirit of the dramatic irony and it certainly was not helping him keep track of his own perils, not at all. It's not like it's even that realistic. He must be living in a soap opera or something. Oceans. Sand. Trees.

"I-I love you." He whispered, and he felt cold inside.

"Oh good," said Fuji. Then he kissed Shiraishi very quietly on the nose and leaned over the railing, swinging an arm over the edge.

He tossed a coin into the streets below.

-/-

-/-

They rode down in the elevator.

For some reason, Fuji kept a four-ounce bottle of chloroform in his coat pockets. He used it to knock out the security guard. He had Shiraishi wear a ski mask and cover the security cameras while he performed the dirty deed, and at some point Shiraishi, remembering the mattress truck parked next to the first floor, almost wished that they'd jumped off the roof instead. They crept into the elevator like criminals (and in a sense they were actually criminals) and Fuji pressed his face against Shiraishi's shoulder, his words mixing into the wool of Shiraishi's sodden coat for the rest of ride down from the sky to the ground.

"How'd you like the roof?"

"It was fun."

"Really? You don't sound like you had much fun up there."

"I didn't."

"Maybe there wasn't enough thunder up there. Maybe I should have said more dramatic stuff. Was it too anticlimatic for you?"

"Just a little bit, yeah."

"C'mon, Shi-ra-i-shi-kun, tell me how you really feel! Let's be honest here."

He blurted out the biggest injustice of it all. "You tricked me."

"You tricked yourself."

"I never should've gone up there with you."

"Was it because of the rain? You always liked the rain. Say that you liked the rain, at least!"

"Yeah, it was nice." He denied the wet newspaper feeling. He denied the water sloshing around in his sneakers. He felt the buzz of the rain tapping against the sides of the building. A minute of melodrama, a stumble for life. "I liked the rain."

Fuji smiled. Shiraishi could feel his smile through his wool coat.

"Wait until you see your car."

-/-

-/-

They usually forget about each other pretty quickly, and yet Shiraishi doubts that he's ever going to forget the two-centimeter-wide _hole_in the middle of his sunroof, 243 meters under the stars, vindictive chirp of a bluebird plus a bullet through his precious car minus a slice through a chamber of his heart. The coin is nowhere to be found, the beast is unsatiable, untameable, incurable and the whole affair just smacks of so much absurdity, lands such a tender blow on his poorly-constructed mentality that he doesn't think he even wants to try handling it like a gentleman. Maybe like a shoe peddler. Maybe. The piano music keeps playing.

"Happy birthday!" Fuji says happily, and he gives Shiraishi a big hug. "It's a hole into Heaven! Now you can see Heaven every day when you're behind the wheel."

He's dumbfounded, by proxy. "This doesn't make any sense. It should have reached terminal velocity long before hitting my car. It couldn't hurt a fly. It's a stupid coin and there's no freaking way that the impact could have reached such an insane level. We're not living in a fucking vacuum. Are we? It wouldn't happen. And it's not my birthday."

"But it's raining," says Fuji, and that seems, for him, to justify the reasoning behind the entire anomaly.

"Just because it's raining doesn't mean that there isn't any air resistance. In fact, since there's so much atmosphere in the air, there should be more of an air cushion..."

"What if it's not just rain?" Fuji grins. "What if it's magical rain?"

He backs up, scandalized. "You're a horrible person. You must have sic'd some cruel mechanical contraption on my car while I was in the washroom."

"You can't prove that I did anything."

"I hate you."

"But you love me too! And I love you back. I never did say that, did I? I love you back."

-/-

The mechanic in Roppongi was nice about fixing his car. He was an older gentleman with very elegant streaks of grease on his arms, well-shaven and well-spoken and very amicable. He wore a very clean-cut pair of blue jean overalls and ate his lunch from a tupperware box. He had a daughter who studied at Keio and she came home during the holidays to make him curry rice. She made him proud and he was happy to support her endeavors. So he worked while humming Tchaikovsky underneath his breath, convinced that he was the luckiest mechanic in the world to have found a car like Shiraishi's. Patched up the bumper for 10,000 yen and wouldn't accept any tips, only muttered thank-yous.

He did, however, inquire after the hole in the sunroof.

"I can do a special for you, Shiraishi-kun. I'll patch this thing up for half the price if you keep coming back to get your car fixed here. Not that I hope you get into more accidents in the future or anything, ha ha! Just a regular check-up or an oil change, I can always handle that."

(And maybe it was because he usually forgot about Fuji pretty quickly, but he declined the offer very quickly and very politely.)

"You sure about that? What about when it rains? Wouldn't want your seat cushions to get all damp."

"It's always going to rain."

"That's no excuse."

"It's really not a big deal," he said, and he managed a smile. "It's a hole into Heaven, after all."

-x-

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><p><em>thank you for reading! reviews are always legit. =D<em>


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